


Saltwater Sting

by Queerapika



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternative Universe - Mermaids, Drowning, M/M, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25803055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queerapika/pseuds/Queerapika
Summary: Later, he will struggle and fail to put the sensation of drowning in his words. The pain when his lungs filled with water.Later, he will ask his mother again and again how he survived, because all he remembers is dying in one moment, then blackness, and then waking up on the shore in her arms. Remembers her hands brushing over his cheeks and her lips spilling apologies into his hair. She is dry but for the saltwater that pours from her eyes.A boy pulled you out of the water, will be her unsatisfying answer. She clings to it, even though there were no boats on the water, even though she refuses to describe the boy.--As Ferdinand grows up, something always pulls him back to the sea. He is the lively son of a strange mother, a mother with secrets, a mother whose eyes are always seeking the ocean. It is not until she is gone that he tries to understand the mystery of her.Little does he know that keen eyes are watching him from the depths.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir & Leonie Pinelli, Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26
Collections: Ferdibert Week 2020





	Saltwater Sting

The first time is an accident.

Ferdinand is eight years old, climbing on the rocks at the sandy gray shores of his father's estate as fast as his chubby legs can carry him. He heeds not the warning shouts of his mother; she is always worried and he is alway fine. And besides, the sea spray tickles his cheeks and the waves whisper as they roll towards him and he feels right, so right. He knows from the hummingbird beat of his heart that this place with its strange green smells and the talking waters is _his_.

Ferdinand lets out another whoop of joy as the next wave crashes against a rock, white foam splashing high. Quickly, he takes a big step to the next rock, which is smooth, glistening with water - and his leg is pulled from underneath him.

He slips. His body hits the rock sideways, coarse stone grates at his skin as quick as the testing bite of the feral neighborhood cat and then Ferdinand goes down and the waves swallow him. The water closes over his head. It burns; his eyes, his skin. His clothes cling strange and heavy to his body, an unwelcome weight. Ferdinand starts to row his arms, by instinct, but he is eight years old and has not yet been taught how to swim.

The white foam of the waves above seems further away now. He can see the pale soft ground underneath, littered with black shapes that look like sea monster poop, but that are actually sea cucumbers. He needs to get up again.

Pressure in his lungs. It grows to a discomfort, and he knows he needs to do something, he _does_. He starts to thrash, but the water is stubborn, slowing his limbs. Breathe. He should- 

be patient, keep trying, keep moving, but he wants out _now_ , and his lungs feel so bad. Is the surface getting any closer at all?

And then, a shadow in the water, and Ferdinand opens his mouth in surprise.

Later, he will struggle and fail to put the sensation of drowning in his words. The pain when his lungs filled with water.

Later, he will ask his mother again and again how he survived, because all he remembers is dying in one moment, then blackness, and then waking up on the shore in her arms. Remembers her hands brushing over his cheeks and her lips spilling apologies into his hair. She is dry but for the saltwater that pours from her eyes.

_A boy pulled you out of the water_ , will be her unsatisfying answer. She clings to it, even though there were no boats on the water, even though she refuses to describe the boy.

* * *

The second time the ocean claims Ferdinand, he has made a miscalculation.

His mother has secrets. So does his father, as keeping secrets is just a mark of adulthood, much like tense silences over dinnertime. Still Ferdinand knows that his mother's secrets are special, because the maids keep whispering about the strangeness of her lady's behavior. Alba von Aegir is a woman of few words; days can pass in which she does not speak at all, but when she does, people listen. Her voice has a lilting, musical quality to it, an accent that guests often remark upon. Alba smiles in return and, if pressed, will confess that she was born on a different shore, although she never specifies where exactly she hailed from, or what circumstances brought her into Wilhelm von Aegir's life. She does not yield even to her son's flood of eager questions and so all that Ferdinand knows about his mother stems from observation.

Such as the fact that her eyes are always distant, seeking. She likes to hum little melodies, and Ferdinand memorizes them, copies them, commits them to paper and pesters his music tutors about them. They are not classical or common tunes. They are hers and hers alone, it seems.

His mother likes to take long walks by the ocean, although she never dares to even dip a toe into the water. And yet, she prefers cold seasalt baths over stewing in a hot brew of herbs and lavender oil. She is soft; the salt never seems to make her hair or skin unpleasantly sticky. She lets Ferdinand sneak into her bed when he had a bad dream, even after he turns nine, ten, eleven, and strokes his hair until he has fallen asleep. And the next morning, he always wakes in his own room.

Ferdinand loves her, and he knows that she loves him, but that there is something she wants, needs, that neither their house nor Ferdinand can provide. And when she looks at him, runs her hands through his hair and says that he is becoming more and more like his father, he thinks he can spot disappointment in her amber eyes.

It is a chilly afternoon in early spring, just a week before Ferdinand's twelfth birthday, when she asks him to take a walk along the shore with him. Ferdinand is delighted; these days his studies and riding lessons leave him so little time to accompany her. She has not complained about his absence, of course, for his mother does not complain about anything. But he worries. The cough that has crept into her lungs in the winter months has now grown into an ever present whistle when she breathes and there are dark bags under her eyes. And sometimes, he catches her staring thin-lipped at the stable girl, a child just a few seasons older than Ferdinand. Her name is Leonie and she keeps her copper hair cut short like a boy, but aside from that, there is nothing that would give reason to take offense. She tends to her duties swiftly and thoroughly. She is kind to the horses. Ferdinand kind of likes her, although, of course, he is not allowed to waste his time chatting with the staff.

But he can carve out time for his mother, and so he takes her by the arm and leads her to the shore. The sky is overcast, the air cold and clammy with the promise of rain. Alba shivers as she looks at the dark sea that laps against the shore. And then she slips out of her shoes and pulls off her socks. There is something about the sight of her pale, vulnerable feet that fills Ferdinand with fear. Perhaps it is the blood unter her toenails or the white scars around her toes. Perhaps it is the bent way with which she walks, her head lowered, her arms clutching to herself. She steps into the wet sand, just far enough for the water to sweep over her feet every now and then.

And she weeps silently for reasons that Ferdinand does not understand.

Eventually, Alba pulls a stoppered bottle from the depths of her coat and throws it far into the waves, with more strength than Ferdinand thought her capable of. Then she turns back, puts on her socks, her shoes, and says that they will go home, offering no further explanation. Ferdinand holds her hand tightly all the way back.

She is dead by the end of the week.

The face of Ferdinand's father grows harder and redder than ever before, as he gives the instruction to wrap the body in linens and send it out in a small boat in the dead of night, the day before Ferdinand turns twelve.

There is no ceremony, no words of farewell, and Ferdinand does not know what to do for the wrongness of it all. He does not know what to make of the fact that they hold a burial only a week later, with a closed, stone filled casket. It all feels like a bad dream and surely, he must wake every moment now. Surely, it is all a mistake, and his eyes drift to where he knows the seashore to be. Any moment now, the sea may give her back and she will rise from the waves and take him in his arms again.

But the sea does not give; it only takes.

He sees her in his dreams. Curled up in a corner of her room, humming a song of distress. The hem of her nightgown is wet with water and blood from her feet.

Ferdinand wakes with a start, his skin sweat-slick, but cold. _They cut the skin between her toes_ , he thinks, and sits up, frantically reaching for his own webbed feet. He prods at the elastic, yet tough skin and finds it unbroken. He is... alright. Just a nightmare, he tells himself, and yet- just another secret to add to the pile. 

He wants answers.

Ferdinand turns to his father and reaps a storm of irritation and insults. He looks into the family chronicle, but while the von Aegir family spans far back to renowned ministers, Dukes, knights, his mother is but a name on a page, a leaf without a branch. He asks the pastor of the local church who married his parents if he has any knowledge if his mothers origin, perhaps even the name of the church that had baptized her.

But the man's face turns dark.

"Your mother, I am afraid to say, did not care for the teachings of our Lord. She was baptized here, in this very church, shortly after her betrothal. I have tried to extend my hand to her many times since then, inviting her to come to our service, or at least make a confession to lighten her consciousness. Alas, she did not. I hope the Lord took mercy on her soul. I do not know what kind of community allows for a woman to stray so far from His light, but I suggest that you do not follow her example, my son. It has not escaped my notice that you have missed the past two choir practices."

Ferdinand swallows his disappointment; it tastes bitter, like black tea that has been steeped for too long. He apologizes, and says that he had needed time to grief, but that he was missing the practice and would like to return soon. In truth, his father had forbidden him from attending choir, calling it 'a folly and a waste of time'. Something that needs to be discarded if he really wants to take on the responsibility of continuing his father’s legacy. And he will take it on, one day, of that Ferdinand has no doubt. But first he must understand the blood that flows through his veins, and what it means for the man he will become.

As a last resort, Ferdinand searches through the belongings of his mother, hoping for a diary, or a single letter that might at least give a hint, or shed some light on the mystery that his mother had been. 

It is there, bent over the meager contents of her vanity table, that he remembers the message in a bottle that she threw into the sea. It is there that he spots a necklace that he has never seen her wear, a light chain of silver with a trinket that looked just like a curled sea shell, carved from red coral. He wraps his fist around it.

What had she been looking for, all the times she stared out to the sea? And had she carried a message in a bottle with her all those times that she went to the shore without him? What kind of words did she entrust to the sea that she could not confide to anybody else?

But perhaps... if he could find the message...

It is a foolish idea, right from the start, but it is something, and no matter how small the chance

He waits for night to fall and makes his way to the shore, his hands clutching tightly to an empty stoppered bottle. He put on his mother's necklace, but keeps most of the chain well hidden under his clothes, The coral pendant feels smooth and cool against his chest, where his heart pounds fiercely. 

By the water, Ferdinand strips down to his underwear and wades into the waves. He throws the bottle far, far as far as he can manage and watches as it bobs up and down on the surface. He watches and waits, hoping for the bottle to be pulled out into the open sea. But after a few minutes it becomes apparent that the ebb and flow of the water pulls the bottle back towards the shore instead. So Ferdinand swims out, picks it up and throws it again.

And again, the bottle is carried back to him.

Had he known a little more about the currents and the ocean, he might have tried his little experiment in the afternoon, at the same time when his mother took him on a walk, but alas, he does not. And so Ferdinand comes to the conclusion that his mother's last message must still be nearby.

He paces the length of the shore but finds only kelp and bleached driftwood, white and large and twisted like the bones of some strange sea serpent.

As the night grows darker, colder, and even the seagulls fall quiet, Ferdinand begins to feel as though he is being watched. He looks about the rising dunes overgrown with reedy plants, and finds that he is as alone as he can be. He shudders.

He could have gone home, of course. But he decides that it is worth a final try to go out and dive for the message in a bottle, because what if it had not been sealed properly and sunk?

(Of course, that would also mean that the message inside would be rendered unintelligible after days in the water, but Ferdinand is too focused on hoping that he does not think any further.)

Ferdinand dives into the sea. 

The water is black all around him. There is no up and down, only the heavy, moving darkness that engulfs him and presses against his skin. His eyes burn, his body remembers the shock of drowning and a swell of panic rises low in Ferdinand's gut. He gropes blindly at the water, and wonders for the first time what he is doing here, what he is doing this for?

Even if his mother's words were buried here somewhere, deep down below, they were not meant for him. And if there was something she had wanted him to know, she had plenty of time and opportunity to tell him, to write him a letter- to make sure he would know her, even if she was gone. But all that Alba von Aegir had given to her son was the color of her eyes, a lovely singing voice, and a number of quizzical apologies. And his feet, with the weird webbed toes that were now kicking, propelling him forward and his hands bury in the soft ground. And if this is down-

Ferdinand curls his body up like a frog until his feet touch the ground. He kicks himself up, up and in the blackness dust glitters around him, swirls around his skin and- 

it's beautiful.

Ferdinand breaks the surface and breathes in, greedy and unrestrained.

And then he returns back to the shore, no wiser than before, but filled with an eerie sort of calm.

"Where'd you _go_? You're ice cold."

Leonie's voice is far too loud and Ferdinand tries to shush her, which earns him a kitchen towel to the face. "Don't you shhh me, Ferdinand von Aegir, who's going to hear me? The dogs?"

The dogs are already awake, of course, and beyond themself with excitement. They shove their large snouts against his body and lap at his salty skin, and between their loving assault and Leonie trying to pat him dry, Ferdinand is well frozen in place. He meant to sneak back into the house undetected, through the kitchen. He forgot that this is where Leonie sleeps, by the oven, all curled up with the wolfhounds.

Leonie rubs his hair aggressively, and tuts. She grabs a strand and rubs it between her finger, wearing a scowl fit for an elderly matron. "Did you go splashing in the sea?"

"Um," Ferdinand says, and his thoughts scatter and scramble for a plausible lie when she shrugs and wraps the towel around his head.

"I'm not sure your Dad is going to appreciate it if you make that a habit. You know that we can run you a saltwater bath at home, right? Did it all the time for your Ma. Safer to do it at home, less likely to sow rumors that way."

She looks at him from head to toe and the corner of her mouth rises to make a lopsided curve. There's a question burning in her scrutiny, something sharp and defined but Ferdinand is grappling for the pebbles of information that threw to his feet. What kind of person would gossip about the kind of baths a person took? Was there a social faux pas that he was not aware of?

"Is it true what they say? Can your people really shift tides and sway people's hearts with a song?"

"My people?", Ferdinand repeats, entirely lost. Were they having the same conversation?

"You know, the merfolk. The sirens, the nix, whatever you call yourself. I wanna know if they can truly call storms and sea serpents or if that's just seafarer's tales."

He blinks. "You think I am a mermaid."

"Well, no. I mean, obviously, you're only half-and-half, but I figured your Ma must have told you something about her kin."

"I-" he says and his throat grows tight. As much as he wants to laugh and push the thought away, it is like a key that fits into the machinery of questions inside of him and gives them movement, purpose. He knew of merfolk from the fairy tales, and from his father’s angry rants. Wilhelm von Aegir liked to refer to them as greedy pests, nuisances that interfered with his company’s deliveries and that had caused damage to his oyster farm on many occasions, and to think that he would have married one of them was _absurd_ , but-

There is the skin between Ferdinand’s toes and the pattern of his mother’s songs that almost feel more like speech, and the fact that his mother always ate her fish fresh and raw, and would shun every other kind of meat. There was the sorrow in her eyes whenever she used to look out towards the ocean. The ocean to which they had given her body in secret.

It is scary, how much of her little oddities begin to make sense if he views them in this new light. And to think that he had spent all this time looking for answers, only to have the truth dropped at his feet in the most nonchalant way.

“So, what do I do now?”

Leonie shrugs. “Go to bed, I suppose,” she says. She is right, of course. There is nothing else to do tonight.

* * *

When next he takes a stroll along the beach, he notices the sun glint off an item in the coarse grey sand. It it a stoppered bottle.

Ferdinand strides closer, hope swelling in his chest. Until he is close enough to make out the shape of the bottleneck and spots the fault in the glass, an air bubble in the shape of a rice grain.

It is the very bottle that Ferdinand tossed into the sea himself. Except. 

_It used to be empty._

He picks it up. Unstoppers the bottle and tips it over until a scroll of yellowed parchment slips into his palm. He takes a deep breath, presses his eyes shut. The parchment makes a crinkling sound as Ferdinand unrolls it, uncovering a few lines of scrawly handwriting.

_If you intend to communicate, I suggest that you remember to put in a message in advance next time. Unless the point of the exercise was to act a fool in which case, congratulations, you succeeded._

_With regards,_

Ferdinand squints at the signature, less legible than the rest until he concludes that it must be _Hubert W-_ although the W was so lopsided it might as well be a _vV_. He does not know any Hubert.

A prank, then?

Perhaps someone had watched his nocturnal activity and decided to mock him for it, counting on the likelihood that he would return to this very beach. Ferdinand is no stranger to mockery; he fits in awkwardly with his peers and the little number of classmates that he would consider friendly, albeit not friends, has dwindled since he left the choir. In addition, not few people envy his father’s wealth and position in the city council and Ferdinand is all too conscious of every sneer and skewed grin he attracts from strangers during outings or his frequent rides.

He tries to crumble the message in his hand, but though it rustles and wrinkles, it does not come apart. Ferdinand plunges his fist in his pocket and stomps home.

He burns the message, later. Then forgets about it. He has more important things to focus on, now that Leonie has given him a starting point for his research.

The next weeks, Ferdinand scours every public and private library within reach, dedicating himself to every book and article about the merfolk that he can get his hands on, scientific and folklore alike. Biology books and encyclopedias yield very little information. They describe the merfolk as marine mammals with little researched transformative skills, violent and territorial. Some were reported to be capable of speech, and of course, some were reported to take human form, yet Ferdinand finds no reliable information on the full spectrum of their abilities and traits. 

Folklore is not much of a help either, because the tales speak only of the female mercreature, and depicts her as an evil seductress that lures seafarers to their death with the thrall of her voice and her ‘sinful appearance’ - illustrated by many a copperplate etching of rather well-endowed and fully naked merwomen that make Ferdinand feel lewd for just looking at them.

The closest thing to a male representation are tales of the watermen: green-teethed creatures that are said to live in rivers and who would occasionally join the celebrations of humans to dance with young maidens and carry them away.

But Ferdinand’s most interesting find is an article by a Professor Hannemann von Essar, with the title “The Fish out of Water - A Comparative Study of Mermaid Physiology and Conclusions for A Possible Reproductive Cycle” that sums up the findings of merwomen dissections to confirm that merpeople are indeed mammals capable of nursing their young, as their teats contain gland tissue and thus are not just a form of mimicking the human appearance.

The article further declares that each dissected specimen was also in possession of ovaries and an uterus-like pouch “almost identical to what one would expect in a human female” although no entrance or access to these reproductive organs could be found “within the tail or any other part of the body”.

At this point, far too late, Ferdinand stops reading. It feels wrong to go on, to consider the very real presence of his mother and have it tainted and defiled in such a scientific yet intimate matter. He is trying to figure out the specifics of his own _existence_ , not examine the exact details of his own conception.

_(And, his mother has lived as a human! Surely it means - no. No, he will not think about it.)_

But although he reads and reads, there is no piece of literature that tells him what _he_ is. He is not a merman, as evident by the fact that he nearly drowned in his childhood. He has a keen hearing and a beautiful voice but his singing does not compel others.

At the same time, there is the skin between his toes. Ferdinand wonders if maybe there had been a biological reason for why he struggles to make friends, why he has always felt so different from his classmates.

And he wonders what will happen if they find out.

* * *

The third time, Ferdinand wades into the waters willingly. He is eithteen years old and all that he wants is to escape.

A storm is raging in the skies above that drenches his clothes the moment he runs out of the door. The rain washes over his cheeks, rinsing away his tears, but providing little relief from the hot shame that runs through his veins.

He cannot stay, but there is nowhere else to go. So Ferdinand runs to the beach. 

The sea has turned the color of slate, the wind whips the waves high, and they foam as they crash against the rocks with force. As Ferdinand slips out of his shoes, his socks, his jacket and leaves them in a careless pile, he knows that his body will not change to allow him refuge in the depths, for he has tried, more often than he cared to admit. He can hold his breath longer than most of his schoolmates, even longer than Leonie, and he can swim well, but he is too human, too soft and warm-blooded to thrive.

It does not matter.

He is better off dead than a disgrace to his family name.

Ferdinand knows that dying will hurt. And as much as he would have preferred something quick and merciful, like the stroke of a blade, this way it will look like an accident. So he swims.

He swims far out in the open, pulling ever forward. The waves threaten to push him back or pull him under, and soon his limbs begin to ache with the strain. Still, Ferdinand goes on.

A peal of thunder in the distance.

And then, something brushes his leg.

Ferdinand freezes. It is one thing to make his peace with drowning. It is another thing entirely to become aware of the reality of the creatures that lived below the surface, hungry and sharp-toothed-

_“You should turn back.”_

Ferdinand yelps. He splashes, paddles, and cranes his neck to look over his shoulders.

And lo, there is another person floating behind him. Their drenched black hair sticks to their head like seaweed and covers one of the stranger’s eyes. The other one, pale yet intense, is staring right at Ferdinand.

Ferdinand stares back, open-mouthed. Where did they come from? He thought himself alone; No one in their right mind would be foolish enough to go for a swim in this weather. No one without a death wish, that is.

They speak again. A warning. “If you swim any further, you might not have the strength to return.”

“So what?”, Ferdinand replies before he can help himself. “I mean, you don’t know that, do you? You’re way too far out yourself. Maybe _you_ should turn back.” He can hear his voice quiver and turn shrill. He did not expect to have a witness. He cannot not do what needs to be done when there is a witness! What is he supposed to do now?

The stranger throws their head back and laughs, but the sound is swallowed by another rumble of thunder.

And then the tide pulls at Ferdinand’s body and he can feel himself drifting away, into the valley of a tall wave. He remembers to kick his feet and swim up, up, up, even as the peak begins to tip and fold over him-

and then all is black again, and heavy, and wet, as the depths swallow him and toss his body around, pulling at his limbs. There is no up and down, no gravity, nothing but-

And then cold arms wrap around him.

Tendrils of light illuminate the water in a strange pattern and there is a pull and a _pop_ -

and Ferdinand crashes side-first onto the planks of a pier.

Which- what?

_Why?_

It takes a moment to catch his breath. The weight of the arm that is draped around his chest slips and is gone. A low groan sounds behind his back.

Ferdinand blinks. He props himself up and takes in his surroundings. 

The pier upon which he lies leads to a narrow path winding up a lush, tiered garden towards a bent and crooked hilltop house. In the twilight of the storm, the many bushes of the garden rustle and move like trembling beasts. The property has no fencing, as far as Ferdinand can see, but as it is framed by coarse gray sandy shores, there is no need for that either. 

What is this place? And how did he get here in the blink of an eye? If not for the way his hair drips and his eyes still sting from saltwater, he would have guessed that he blacked out for a while. But no, he had been pulled right out of the sea and somehow dropped here.

Next to him, a pained groan. And Ferdinand finally takes the time to truly regard the person that lies next to him, whose cold and forceful embrace still ghosts over his skin. It is the other swimmer, collapsed flat on their back. Their - _his_ \- skin looks pale with an almost sickly pallor, his eyes are pressed shut, his breathing shallow.

A simple white linen shirt clings to the skin of his chest that rises and falls, rises and falls, and through the sheer wet fabric, Ferdinand can spy a series of dark markings crawling up the stranger’s sides like the stripes of a tiger. But the stripes were not the only strange thing; his hands showed an inky discoloration from the cuff of bis wrist traveling down even into the pointed fingernails. And then there was the matter of the tail that comprised the man’s lower half. 

Well, not a man. A merman.

Ferdinand's fingers twitch, itching to run over the dark scales, to touch the bony fins that fan out from the merman's hips, not unlike a lionfish’s. His heart beats fast, faster than when he first sat upon a horse’s back, faster even than when the handsome gardener’s assistant first pressed a kiss on his cheek, leaving an imprint sticky with gloss.

Finally, after all these years-

He presses a light touch to the merman’s shoulder. Pale eyes snap open and with a snarl, the creature thrashes its tail to propel his body and roll on top of Ferdinand. An iron grip pins his wrist to the ground while the other hand seizes his throat. Needle sharp nails dig into the sides of his neck. Ferdinand takes a gulping breath.

“Don’t,” the merman snarls. His face twists into a scowl as he studies Ferdinand’s face. 

Ferdinand does not move. En eery calm washes over him, and his noisy mind falls quiet for the first time in hours, no, days, as the world is condensed. There is him and there is the other, torn between living and dying, killing and sparing. A simple duality.

And then the merman lets go of Ferdinand’s throat.

“Fool. What were you doing?”, he growls. “You nearly drowned.”

“But you saved me,” Ferdinand replies. “That light - that was magic, was it not? It’s the only explanation. Can all of your kind do magic? Or just a few?”

The merman snarls. His eyes narrow and he props himself on his forearms, before rolling off of Ferdinand. He comes to sit; his hands brush over his scales. “Go home, little human. Save your pestering questions for some other unfortunate soul.”

“I-” Ferdinand says, and remembers the face of his father, pink with rage. “I cannot go home. Not after what I have done.”

“That has nothing to do with me,” the merman replies. But contrary to his words, he does not leap back into the waters. Instead, he peers at the sky. The rain is falling lightly now, the clouds have turned a paler grey and every now and then, they grant a glimpse of an orange afternoon glow. “There are better places to run away, though. Without a boat, you would have never made it very far. Unless, of course, you never intended to.” 

The truth is like a cold grip around Ferdinand’s stomach. And to have a stranger see right through him-

“I brought shame to my father’s name,” he says. “I brought a thief into the house. Well, I did not know he was a thief, of course. He seemed just like a charming young man. Hard-working, a little guarded and often too cynical, but... he had a lovely singing voice. And he was handsome - painfully so.”

The merman says nothing, and does not tear his eyes away from the afternoon sky, but his tail fin flaps and Ferdinand is sure that he is listening. And Ferdinand wants so badly to be listened to. To explain himself to another soul, a neutral party. Chances are, he will never see this merman again. There is no harm in a confession.

“We grew close. And then he turned around and stole some of my father’s most prized possessions and disappeared. He- he _betrayed_ me. Used me. And the worst thing is, he left an apology letter for me. A maid found it before I did. And she took it right to my father.”

“I fail to see how you are at fault for another man’s actions.”

Ferdinand draws his legs close to his chest. Hugs his knees close. “My transgression was not that I gave him the opportunity to steal from us. He would have found a way, with or without me. When I met Yuri, he had just started working as an assistant to our gardener. That should have given him enough access to spy out our house for goods and easy entry points.”

Ferdinand swallows. _Don’t take it to heart, my little Robin_ , the letter said. _It was nothing personal._

“No, my unforgivable crime was that I had taken him to bed. That I had taken _a man_ to bed. And now, because of that letter, the entire staff knows. And soon, everyone in town will know. So you see-” Ferdinand says and wipes at his eyes. “You should have just let me drown.”

The merman puffs out his breath and flicks his tail again. “And where would be the justice in that? To forfeit the live of the one who was least guilty in this charade?” The merman takes a deep breath and digs his claw-like nails into the wood of the pier. He turns his head to meet Ferdinand’s gaze. His eyes are electric, brimming with an intensity that Ferdinand cannot name. “If you cannot return to your old home, then go find yourself a new one. Take your sister and a few horses and start a better life for yourself, somewhere where no one knows your name. You have money; I hear that it can open many a door.”

“I don’t have a sister,” Ferdinand says, almost by reflex. He does not know how to respond to anything else. How can the merman speak with such an authority, as if he knew Ferdinand, or his struggles?

“Sibling, then. My apologies, I did not mean to presume.”

“I do not have a _sibling_ either.”

The merman raises a brow. “Oh? How curious. Either way, whatever choice you make, do me a favor and leave me out of it next time.” He shifts his tail towards the side of the pier.

“Wait-” Ferdinand cries out.

The merman groans. “What now?”

“Would you tell me your name? I want to know who I owe my life.”

The other is silent for a heartbeat. “My name is Hubert. Hubert von Vestra.”

_Hubert._ The name sounds vaguely familiar. “My name is-”

“I know who you are, Ferdinand von Aegir.”

And with that, Hubert slips off the pier and there is nothing left of him but a ripple on the water.

The rain subsides. As the clouds part, and reveal a sky bleeding crimson, Ferdinand finally comes to his feet again. He keeps his head low as he begins his ascend toward the house on the hill.


End file.
